ll be so
inferior on our own seas, as to permit an enemy to land; secondly, that
if they do land, they will choose to attack the only places which
we have fortified. If such be our defence, there must be a circle of
fortresses round our shores; but the safety of England rests on
the courage and enterprise of its people, not on ramparts and
fortifications. And after all the plan is unauthorised by the report
of the board; the opinion of naval officers has been withheld; and the
opinion of military officers is founded on hypothetical or conditional
suggestions, and on such data as were proposed to them, for the truth or
probability of which they refuse to make themselves responsible." In the
debates, both Sheridan and all the orators on his side, treated the
Duke of Richmond as a renegade, and made the whole matter a mere party
question, and from this cause Pitt was doomed to suffer a defeat. Upon
a division there was an equal number of ayes and noes, and when the
speaker was called upon to give his vote, he gave it on the side of
opposition; the project therefore fell to the ground.

PITT'S FINANCIAL MEASURES.

On the 7th of March, Pitt moved for the appointment of a select
committee of nine persons, for the purpose of reporting on the state
of the public revenue and expenditure. The report of this committee was
highly satisfactory. The amount of the revenue for the current year
was estimated at L15,397,000, while the permanent expenditure and the
expences of the peace establishment would only require L14,478,000,
thereby leaving a surplus of more than L900,000. In consequence of this,
Pitt, on the 29th of March, brought under consideration the national
debt and his new sinking-fund. He thought that the surplus might be
increased to one million, without burthening the people, and he moved
that such a sum should be annually granted to commissioners, to be by
them applied to the purchase of stock towards discharging the public
debt of the country. The new taxes which he proposed, in order to raise
the surplus to one million, were an additional duty on ardent spirits,
and new duties on certain kinds of timber and perfumery. In making this
proposition Pitt showed that he was full of hope for the future. He
calculated that the accumulated compound interest of the one million
so appropriated, added to the annuities which would fall into the fund,
would, in the course of twenty-eight years, leave a surplus of four
milli